Australasian Update, Autumn 2007

Sorrow and concern fell over Australasian newsrooms on March 7 when an early morning Garuda commuter flight crashed in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, killing 21 people, including five Australians, and seriously wounding many others.

Shock washed over newsrooms when it was realised that, along with names of high-profile diplomatic personnel and Australian Federal Police officers, the list of the dead included affable Australian Financial Review reporter Morgan Mellish.

His Fairfax colleague Cynthia Banham, who works for the Sydney Morning Herald, was listed as critically injured.

After she was stabilised, a medivac team transferred a badly burned Cynthia to a Perth hospital where she has since been under the watchful eye of a team of international burns experts headed by Dr Fiona Wood.

Determined to return to work when fully recovered, Cynthia has had one leg amputated as well as part of the other leg but has recently had her first days sitting up out of bed and says she is buoyed by continuing messages of support being sent to her from colleagues and the public.

Those who worked alongside Morgan and Cynthia in Asia were deeply shaken by what happened. Several have shared what it meant to be close to those who died or were injured.

In the latest edition of The Age’s subscriber newsletter, InsideTheAge, its Indonesia correspondent, Mark Forbes — the only Australian journalist on the ground in Yogyakarta when the plane went down — tells a poignant story of how he experienced the shock and disbelief of the first 24 hours while filing two written pieces for The Age, arranging support for Cynthia and for Morgan’s family as well as fielding “countless radio and TV interviews on autopilot”.

His unique insights, as a journalist and a participant in a disaster, are valuable contributions to our understanding of individual and community responses to trauma.